


With Bared, Hungry Teeth

by Wigfrid



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, F/M, Gore, Headcanon, Horror, I'm definitely a descriptive writer so heads up, Monsters, Romance, Slow Burn, cause who would castrate someone if they're trying to test a successful personality transfer?, he also has toes, love me some end of the world aesthetic, nick has a dick, the wasteland is a creepy place
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-07 07:06:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wigfrid/pseuds/Wigfrid
Summary: Starting something new! It's gonna be a slow burn but if you've read my other piece that probably isn't a surprise. Hope you like it! <3





	1. Chapter 1

There’s nothing worse than hopelessness. Or Maybe Lydia is thinking of meaninglessness? Because at least with being hopeless you know there’s a desire you’ll never reach, something you want but you know you can never, ever have. 

That sounds nice right now. To want something. God, to want anything. 

Desire, it’s like warmth over numb skin. And she’s not even thinking about the good kind of heat, the soft sweetness of sunshine when you step out of a shadow. She’s thinking of the kind of heat blasting out of a radiator. You’re so fucking cold you’ve turned it all the way up and the old metal hisses and sputters angrily at you as it spits out itchy hot air. The dry kind that prickles over your frozen skin, making you sweat through your chills. You’re cold and hot all at once. Too many sensations, all of them bad. 

Hopeless wants are that kind of heat. And Lydia would still pick that feeling over nothing. Because right now, Lydia thinks she’s dead. She think she’s been dead for a long time. 

It’s not hard to survive. She can feed herself, not good food but it’s calories, it’s fat and carbs and protein. She can fill her stomach enough that it won’t talk to her. She can open her mouth and chew and chew and chew, banishing a hateful friend into nothingness. She can find enough nourishment to erase it’s angry voice. 

But what does it matter? Lydia can continue on with little effort, enough to function through a half wilted auto pilot. She doesn’t want for food, doesn’t need shelter because she can manage to find it without any of that necessary drive to pull her onward. She’s just competent enough to live indefinitely in this endless mediocrity. It’s boring. Numbing. Pointless. 

Outside, it’s an endless autumn. The trees are dead, the leaves have long since blown away and the world is begging for change. Lydia sits inside, hunched over that hissy piece of metal, nearly scorching her toes and fingertips on air too artificially hot. 

The world has been dead for a while. Some of it has been reborn, burst forth from a womb too hostile to birth anything but monsters. She can hear one outside, clawing it’s way through the dirt, burrowing beneath her abandoned half-won sanctuary. 

Lydia has seen it’s kind surface before.The shellacked legs, the swollen abdomen, twitching like a belly pulled taut with something on the brink of life. It builds traps in the dirt, greedy legs and fangs waiting just under the crust. 

The sight is terrifying, the way it peers out at her, hungry and waiting, but she knows it will never give chase. It hunts via luck, the hope that some thoughtless or carefree victim will wander over it’s hidden door. She can hear it digging, widening it’s hunting ground with razor tipped feet, slick wet jaws.

She might try to kill it before she goes, toss in a handmade explosive and hope she’s rid the world of another shred of nightmare, flickering on the collective peripheral vision of humanity. 

But even that takes some form of drive, some interest in living versus surviving and Lydia doesn’t know if she has that. It’s true this base is worth something, it’s as safe as any little hut can be but it’s nothing special. She could just let the trapdoor spider take over, eat away beneath the floorboards until it has an actual trap, rotted through wood that can burst upwards and swallow up anyone looking for shelter. 

It would be the kind thing to do, to kill it before it spreads, but Lydia doesn’t know if she’s kind anymore. 

She presses her hands closer to the space heater, singeing a broken nail slightly before the sting against her fingertips gets too unbearable. Outside the creature clicks quietly, impatient and hoping it’s meal will stumble closer. A part of her wants to run from that telltale sound but she doesn’t. Instead she unwraps an ancient meal bar and pretends the sounds of the crinkling foil cover up it’s hungry mandibles. 

It doesn’t. But Lydia has gotten much better at pretending. 

…

There are other places more alive than here. Places where the rot of humanity spread out less infectiously. Trees grow there, craggy and half alive but still blooming strange prickly leaves. 

The flowers are small and hardy, thick velvety stems and sharp tipped petals but they continue to blossom. Tiny bursts of color that litter the countryside like little shreds of trash torn apart in the hailstorms, everywhere but somehow pretty instead of disheartening. 

Lydia misses that place, misses the water that wouldn’t sting if you had an open sore in your mouth, the tiny bright eyed fish that scattered when your shadow touched down beside them. The sun seemed more yellow back home, healthier. Out here, even with the clouds scattered by the breeze, everything looks sickly. Dyed a nauseous green, like the whole world is about to empty it’s stomach around you. 

But travel is by foot or by Brahmin and she’s wandered so far for so long, She’s not certain she has the strength to turn around. She’s tired, she’s sick and as the near death outside chitters and clicks and the noxious faux- life in front of her mimics the sounds with it’s own metallic call, Lydia curls inward and rolls her palms against her eyes. 

She thinks she might be dead but she’s too tired to go any further than a weak imitation of it. It’s temporary but it’s all she has the drive for. 

She drops her bag from her shoulder, twists the power button on her heater to preserve battery.

Lydia closes her eyes. And she sleeps. 

…

Bright colors, neon and lively. People brimming over with life, bubbling like the liquid in their glasses. She stands on the outskirts, watching them dance, watching the man she does and does not recognize walk slowly closer. He’s got that face, the one she finds her self searching for in crowds, her heart skipping a beat when she checks over corpses. At least it wasn’t him, she always tells herself, uncertain who he even is. 

But finally he’s arrived. He’s too pretty for this world, no scars on his skin or hidden in his smile. Bright brown eyes that look like they’re always in love, a special kiss in the corner of his mouth, the kind she’s read stories about. But this one is attainable. This one she knows is waiting just for her. 

He reaches out for her with hands that chill her just at the sight. His fingertips are blackened, ashen and crisped but still Lydia takes his hand. She wants to dance with him. The cold seeps into her palms, stings her back where he carefully leads her into the throng.

And they dance, they dance as the scent of booze and blackjack fades and blight and purification takes their place. As the people laughing and swirling by change from strange to familiar. Every life she’s ever taken, every body she’s ever left lying on the road. 

Yet still he holds her, her careful stranger. He holds her tight to his chest, hard as ice, cold as a corpse. And Lydia weeps, too scared to lift her head, too guilty to stare into the rotted out eyes of the people she’s been nothing but misfortune for. 

She cries and keeps her gaze lowered, watching as her tears freeze on her lovers chest, tiny pinpricks of light, the only proof she’s still alive. 

…

Morning comes like she’s been dragged from her deathbed. Her back is stiff, muscles pulled tight from hunching over her knees and her head aches from the old heat filling the cabin. The cloth under her arms is soaked, unpleasantly sticky and stinks of stress and bad dreams. She stretches as the radiator clicks away, listening as her bones pop out a matching staccato. 

That was careless of her. The heater is small, portable and battery powered, worth it’s weight in caps. She should take better care of it. She should at least care that she isn’t. 

She doesn’t. 

‘This is the beginning’, the hissing radiator whispers. ‘The beginning of the end. You’ll die in a ditch somewhere, legs giving out beneath you not from exhaustion but from lack of reason. You’ll die because why shouldn’t you?’ 

The words are a familiar tune but, as Lydia stumbles to her feet, the abrupt change in clicking is new song. 

And a memory returns, the quiet kind. Easy to question because it’s just a habit at this point, why should her brain bother to retain this information? But it has, and she can see, clear in her minds eye, turning the radiator off.

The clicking continues. Too close. 

Just as her sleep addled mind pieces together the puzzle, the floor to her right lunges. The wood bursts like a sore, splinters flying in every direction as thick armored legs spring forward, hooked feet digging into her calf and tugging. The trapdoor spider's feet split through her pants and skin like butter, digging into the muscle beneath. 

Lydia drops like a stone, a startled shriek half caught in her throat as she falls. Another leg joins the first, digging into her thigh and pulling her closer. She can hear it’s jaws as it hungrily waits to snap her neck. Its mandibles are strong, impossibly so and memories flash of Brahmin, wild dogs and molerats crushed to pieces as it clamped down, crunching bones like a snack. 

Lydia doesn’t stand a chance if it gets her any closer so she twists, tugs her pocket knife from her coat and starts to slash blindly downward. The blade connects, digging into flesh and exoskeleton alike but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t have the time to aim. 

She just keeps cutting.

Finally, finally the spider’s grip loosens, either wounded or surprised at an enemy that fights back with claws as sharp as its own. The second the constant pull lessens, Lydia twists and drags herself away, screaming out with what little strength she has left. Her open wounds drag against the floor, scattered shards of wood digging in past fabric and flesh. Her call is guttural, inhuman, the primitive voice of pain. 

Her bag has fallen into the trapdoor, all her supplies, her stimpaks vanished into a shadowed maw. There is nothing left for her inside so she just pushes onward. She doesn’t stop crawling until the spider’s furious clicks fade away, drowned out by the pounding in her ears. 

The sun has risen, casting a sickly glow over the empty landscape. 

Lydia is alone, empty handed and wounded and the realization hits her almost as painfully as a jagged claw.

She doesn’t want to die yet. 

And the choice might have just been taken out of her hands.


	2. Synthetic Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, this one gets pretty gross.

Nick dreams about an old half-friend tonight. 

Dreams aren’t something he would have suggested if he’d been in charge of piecing together an old prewar personality. They’re too murky, too confusing and too easy to slip, tilting like smoke in a glass into something terrible. This one is no different, too many shadows, too many questions. It is familiar at first. The same old show but the casting, that is something new.

Nora. She’d vanished a couple years back, gone with nothing but a graphite goodbye. He still has the note, tucked under his bed with the others, sorted with the cases he technically solved but felt he failed. They found her son but he didn’t get her her baby. 

It was a synthetic victory in every sense of the word.

The guilt feels oddly personal.

But time passes, she had been a driven, closed door sort of woman. He’d cared for her like he does for most good folk but they’d never been close. Dreaming about her now, it’s a surprise. 

He is in the rubble he awoke in, all those years ago. Naked, empty but for memories that feel like an old movie he’d watched through warped glass. It is a familiar dream, though still striking.

Nick rises to his feet, wincing when the sting of broken glass tests his still-new superficial sensors. He is alone this time, surrounded by towering buildings, aged to him a thousand years in a day. He knows what this place should look like, remembers how bright and bustling it could be. 

A sugar bomb wrapper skips by, the familiar logo old and distorted with age. 

He feels the horror he felt once before, the sudden warp of time, of reality as everything he thought was real distorts. He stumbles back but his body feels wrong, too tall, too lean, still familiar in a human way but foreign, not his. He feels drunk but too sharp all at once, things are too clear, too easy to understand. He wants to vomit but while the impulse is there, the mechanism seems to be gone. 

He’s relived this a million times. Again, dreams. A damn bad idea on their part. 

Just as the first wave of denial fades and the usual recoil of panic takes over, he sees her. 

She’s wandering through the rubble, arms wrapped tight around a small bundle that wiggles and squirms in her arms. She’s cooing to her burden, her soft whispers caring like the quiet but persistent whistle of the wind through the wreckage of this old city. 

He steps towards her, puzzled. He’s never seen her interact with a child and it’s concerning, she looks unnatural, arms stiff and her gestures slow and drifting. 

“Hey kid, you’re looking pretty lost.” He calls out to her, drawn towards this familiar face like a moth to a flame. It feels so good to see a memory that doesn’t taste like he’s tugged it from another man’s head and he knows her, Nora, a tragic story if ever he’s seen one. 

She turns at his voice and her expression freezes him in place. She looks so confused, her brows knit together and her lips parted to form around a shapeless word. Her cheeks are streaked, paler where the tears have washed the dust away. 

“Nick?” She had a nice voice, strong, certain even when she was questioning herself. At this point Nick know’s he’s dreaming and he marvels at just how well his memory has recreated it. He can even hear the little wisp of warmth that always showed up in his name, that bit of hope behind it. 

It hurts to hear now as she clutches at the child he couldn’t reunite her with. The only snippet of hope she had, slipping out in a name she barely spoke. He’d tear up if this damn body would let him. 

“Yeah Nora, it’s me.” He steps closer, choosing to ignore the nudity that always accompanied this dream. It’s dehumanizing, stumbling around in this toy of a body, but Nora has made no reference to it, her stare caught as surely to his face like a woman drowning clings to a raft. 

“It’s not him, Nick.” The confusion crumbles away, a mask to dust, and what’s left behind is despair. She stumbles towards him, distraught in a way he only ever saw her once. 

She was a beautiful woman when he knew her, brimming with a lifetime of health this world would never be able to provide, but she wears her beauty like a disguise. More often than not, her face would fall into a death mask, expressionless and unreadable. He’s seen it fade before, watched it break altogether once and this, as she rushes forward, eyes bright and face twisted with misery, is a perfect simulation. 

She hits him with a thump, crushing the bundle between his chest and hers. He can feel it squirming, fighting to escape her grip with more strength than a newborn would ever be able to possess. 

“He’s dead. He died the same day Nate did.” She tilts her face up and the pale moonlight catches the shine on her cheeks, under her nose. She’s sobbing, her whole body shaking and damn it, he’s seen so many of his clients crumble under his bad news but it still shook him to watch the same reaction in her, this untouchable woman. 

“Hey doll, kiddo.” He stutters out pet names like they’re stimpaks. “You knew this. You did the best you could. You never gave up on him, tore down the institution’s walls just to search for your boy.” 

It’s the same sentiment he told her all those years ago, the same words he watched slip off her tense shoulders, empty platitudes on deaf ears. 

She didn’t cry the day she took him down, watched the last of her family vanish into the earth with a dry face. He respected her for it, hoped it meant she’d heal. 

Nora was gone the next day.

“He died and I still have to kill him. I don’t want this. Please.” 

She pushes the bundle into his arms and he feels something give way beneath the blanket, feels the creature inside burst and fall deathly still. He wants to be sick, swallows down nonexistent nausea. It wasn’t a baby. He knows this but still he winces when he loses his grip. 

Nick drops the blanket, watches it hit the cracked cement and roll, revealing a half crushed botfly, it’s broken wings and crumpled legs still twitching in it’s final death throes. 

Nora steps away from him, watching the mutated bug jerk at their feet. She looks dazed. 

“Nick?” That little scratch of hope, the wordless question. He looks up and his stomach longs to drop. She’s wearing an old world dress, a faded pink that looks impossibly wrong on her. Her arms are still half lifted but they don’t hide what the now missing bundle reveals. 

The botfly has laid eggs. 

A deep red blooms out at her stomach, blending into the faded pink with a sick resemblance to fashion. But in the middle, twisting like exposed intestines, are larvae. Thick white worms writhe viciously in the fresh air. Nick stumbles back in horror. He watches as she sees his expression and glances down, the puzzled look on her face never changing. 

Countless maggots squirm and thrash, bright white against the fabric and exposed meat of his old acquaintance. 

“I’m not going to make it.” She half smiles at him, the tears gone, the panic and misery a forgotten dream. “I died then too, Nick. When they shot him.” Nora lets a hand hover over her midriff, slender fingers shaking slightly as the beasts inside her continue to consume.

“They killed all three of us.” 

Nick wakes gasping for air he hasn’t needed in decades.

…

The dream haunts Nick for the next couple days. He can’t stop picturing it, one of the saddest stories he’s ever seen, his worst failure mixed with a pretty damn good success, being eaten alive by her old demons. 

He’s wondered before if there was something he could have done to help her, something he could have said or even just a hand he could have offered. Now though, with that dream fresh in his mind, the questions return. 

Maybe they could have been closer? Maybe he could have cracked that cold exterior somehow. She sure helped him, stood by his side when he hunted down another man’s unfinished business. Killed for the person who lived in his head. 

The day is still just starting in Diamond City and the marketplace has just begun to stir. Nick sees a botfly set out on a meat stand, it’s hard outer casing cracked open like a flaky pastry over creamed filling. He tries to ignore it but his heel refuses, making a sharp turn in the dirt and changing his wandering course towards the entrance. Maybe he needs a day out of town, some new sights and new cases to clear this visual from his mind. 

Ahead of him, a small crowd has started to form, people usually still slow and diluted with sleep talking in quick hushed voices. Nick wanders closer, wondering if a new Publick Occurrence has come out with something extra juicy. No one sounds offended yet but here in Diamond City, it’s really only a matter of time. 

Nick almost hopes it’s that, something light and frivolous to distract him. Even in the apocalypse people still like their gossip. He chuckles a little to himself. It’s almost a comfort, how little people change. It isn’t until he hears a pained gasp that his step quickens. 

The crowd parts as he approaches, their artificial detective, unnerving but always there to jump on a new case. He likes that trust, even if it comes with some taking of granted. He’d rather be an old shoe than a militant boot on threatened soil. 

“God, is that her?” 

“I don’t know, she looks different.” Hushed voices drift through the crowd as the source of their curiosity is revealed. A bedraggled woman, curled over a trashcan, clutches at her side. Her hair shields her face but she looks up when she hears his footsteps, so much more certain than the others hovering around her. 

And Nick feels like he’s dreaming again. Almost more so because while it’s similar, it isn’t quite the face he recreated in his sleep those few days ago. 

Her pretty face is twisted, her left brow and eye are slanted roughly upward, a thick jagged scar marking her forehead like a fresh crack in cement. Her hair is longer, tangled, her body is leaner, her hands are scarred and one is missing two fingers. 

She looks like she’s been torn in two and pieced back together by someone who barely knew her. 

But all it takes is one word and Nick knows completely who is slowly bleeding out before him. His failed charity case, his most reckless adventure, his brief and tortured partner. 

Nora looks up at him, eyes bright with pain but her voice still impossibly steady. 

“Help.” 

And there it is. His second chance. 

He has her in his arms before he even knows he's moved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos, guys. You make my day <3


	3. Uncanny Valley

It takes a long time to make her way through this vicious city. 

Lydia starts off looking for a little settlement. Something small, maybe some farmers or even NCR. They weren’t the easiest to get along with. They tripped her up constantly, stretching out the red tape like a child trying to play a prank. But they were decent enough, probably wouldn’t rob the limping woman stumbling toward their camp on instinct. She hasn’t seen much of them for about a month but a girl can dream.

No luck though.

So she passes by the obvious killers, the radiation mad ghouls and the half awake addicts curled tight in alleys. She loots what she can, bandages up everything that gushes a little too much and keeps on trucking. 

The guard actually sees her first and fuck if that isn’t embarrassing. She’s just trying not to vomit for the second time that day when she hears a voice, rough and abrupt shout a warning. 

“Hey!” Lydia jolts, stumbles back when a man with a bat starts to walk briskly her way. 

“You okay?” 

And wow she wants to lie but with the rapidly staining bandages and the slowly forming double vision, she doubts even the most silver tongue could work that angle. 

“Not doing too great actually.” She shrugs, trying to make light as her feet start to slip out from underneath her. “I have things to trade, you got a stimpak?” Showing all her cards when she already has a bad hand. Lydia wants to slap herself. She can’t though, probably wouldn’t survive it.

“Eh, nah, sorry. But they got a doc inside.” The man gestures with his bat at a large set of doors to his left. 

Lydia eyes him over. The entrance fee to Vegas was heavy and this is no Vegas but it does look secure, safe enough to be something worth paying for. He doesn’t come closer, doesn’t seem interested in being payed in something other than caps. In fact he almost sounds concerned.

A wave of static nearly overcomes her and Lydia starts walking. 

His voice actually sounds a little young now that she thinks about it and Lydia can see wide eyes watching her under his barred helmet. He’s new, he’s nervous… She’s lucky. 

Or at least she can’t afford suspicion right now. Behind her the guard mumbles something through an old speaker that crackles and pops as a disembodied voice hisses back. 

It’s hard to make out so she doesn’t bother trying. 

She stumbles forward, pushes her way through the doors as they slowly swing open on a large town. It’s informal, slapped together in a way that feels almost familiar. It’s got way too many damn stairs. 

Things start going dark, long swatches of shadow bleed into her vision from every side.  
Lydia just keeps walking. 

The steps seem farther apart than she remembers…than they should be. Her arms feel a little numb, the straps of her new makeshift pack digging into her shoulders like two greedy hands, desperate to push her down. Soon her feet follow suit. Her whole body is tingling, half asleep like she’s been crouched too long but she hasn’t and she knows what severe blood loss feels like. 

The town is empty for it’s size, sleepy looking people gathering as the early morning spills over its reinforced walls. They watch as Lydia stumbles her way forward, quiet and as unhelpful as she’s grown to expect from the settlements this far north. 

Not that they were friendly back in Vegas but still. She could use a fucking hand. 

Reaching the final step feels like a triumph but her feet are too numb to appreciate the solid thump of dirt against her heels. She doesn’t know how she’s still walking and it’s almost like the thought reminds her legs that she shouldn’t be. Already weak knees buckle and she falls, dropping to as defensive a crouch as she can muster. 

A small crowd starts to gather, conspiratorial whispers filling the space more than the actual wastelanders ever could. Lydia would be bothered by this but she’s very cold. Why is she so cold? Thoughts start slipping from her mind, slick as a fish in her sweaty palms. They circle and repeat themselves, gone before she can even answer her own questions.

What did they say? What was that? What did she say? What was that word? What? She feels drunk, drugged. The same confusion spiraling back, a new face each time, wicked death masks leering at her like a prewar horror movie. 

And then a bright light splits the crowd. No hostile comments, no twisting expressions, unfamiliar and unfriendly. It’s gray, reaching for her with a dimly shining palm. And warm, winkles and flaws that look just right, safe and known, like your favorite chair warmed in the morning sun. She sees sunlight, golden and electric and somehow concerned. Lydia can’t piece the picture together, isn’t certain she’s even looking at a human but even though it makes no sense at all she still feels like she’s looking at a friend. 

“Help.” It’s a plea to a mysterious figure, a plea to the world, a plea to Fate, a rule she’s been certain abandoned her long ago. 

Help. 

Darkness bleeds into her vision, pulsing like veins as something else engulfs her. She smells oil and smoke, she smells blood, she smells old leather and damn it if she doesn’t just barely taste a memory. It’s the final sense to leave her, just the faintest taste of stinging moonshine and ancient cola, cutting across her tongue like a chipped glass. 

…

Lydia’s senses return to her one by one. 

First she can feel; Scratchy sheets, a hard mattress, dented where someone with zero restlessness has slept for years. She rolls slightly, pressing her hip into the lowest point because somehow that actually makes the bed comfy, an oddly specific sensation she would miss on lonely roads. 

And no pain. Thank god.

Next it’s the scents again, smoke and the smell of an old building, ancient wood and tinny metal. She wants to smell tea, the bitter kind that someone sweet would drink on long cold nights but the air is empty of it. 

Sounds are almost not existent but she can hear her own breathing, the warm rumble of humanity living outside, oblivious to the little blips of life hidden away by makeshift walls. A bell rings. The sound of muffled conversations fluctuates like a tide, rolling by as people pass. A dog is barking in the distance. 

Lydia sighs, stretches and smiles at the chorus of pops as her body awakens with her. 

A gruff voice breaks the silence. 

“Looks like someone’s feeling better.” 

Lydia shoots up, the familiarity of the scene fading like a dream as she remembers that she has no fucking clue where she is. Sleep blurs the scene before her but she sees a man, dressed in gray and sitting at her bedside, lean closer. He holds out a weapon, long, spiked and wicked. The image wavers, sharpens and she scrambles back, pressing hard against the wall behind her and bracing herself for a fight while she takes in the situation.

For one thing, it’s not a man. It’s something else. It has gray skin, pallid and false, almost living but not quite. Something about it sets her off, triggers a fear she’s entirely unused to. It feels like she’s being lied to and not even being lied to well. Like some two bit scam artist thinks they can hand her a painted rock and tell her it’s an apple. 

The thing smiles at her, a cadavers grin, something mechanical stretching flesh that isn’t it’s own. Wicked yellow eyes flicker from her face to her posture, the smile twisting from full force to questioning, the brows tilting to show a farce of confusion and even the tiniest bit of hurt. 

Lydia wants to kill it. 

“Get the fuck away from me.” She has a deep voice and she puts every ounce of force she can behind it. You don’t get out of New Vegas without learning how to bluff your way out of a badly dealt hand and Lydia knows if you don’t have a weapon, there’s more than one way to attack your opponent. 

“Woah, woah. Calm down, kid.” The creature recoils, lifting two hands, one as falsely human as it’s face and the other stripped, bare metal claws twitching like a half dead spider. 

“Let me go.” She edges along the wall, back pressed tight against the scavenged metal. The thing laughs, a wicked bite of sarcasm bleeding in with an expression that now looks more than a little hurt. 

“Wasn’t keeping ya. Just thought I’d patch up an old friend before they died on my doorstep.” 

It watches her while she steps out of the bed, pressing down carefully to test the strength in her limbs. She feels fine, which means she’s definitely been treated, with a Stimpak no less which is no small cost in these parts. She eyes the creature carefully. It looks annoyed now, crooking a brow at her like she’s being an ornery child (or a hard to hack terminal, a quiet voice whispers in the back of her mind.) 

Something in her bristles.  
“What do you want?” She glares, inching further away. They’re in a small room with a set of steps descending behind her. Lydia readies herself to bolt but holds steady. It’s creepy, that’s for certain, but right now it doesn’t seem hostile and the air of intelligence about it is interesting. 

“Oh just to catch up, see what my old friend has been up to, maybe exchange some pleasantries. Doesn’t really seem likely now though.” 

Everything this thing says sounds like a quip and Lydia rolls her eyes at it without really knowing why. A tiny twitch flickers at the corner of it’s mouth, the false laugh lines creasing with the faintest hint of amusement. It turns towards her, propping one elbow on it’s knee and leaning forward. She thinks she can see something behind it’s electric eyes, deductions going a mile a minute. The thing studies her for a little too long, it’s gaze finally settling on her scar before returning to meet her own.

“So, you don’t remember me, huh?” 

It’s not much of a question. Lydia doesn’t have much of an answer. 

She waits, acutely aware of the steps behind her. 

“Well, there’s not much to do for that, is there?” The sight of it smiling churns her stomach, the same instincts flailing up to run, to fight, the figure out how and why this thing is trying to trick her. But the smile is short, barely there, like a consolation prize for a game she didn’t know she lost. 

All her instincts tells her it’s about to attack but instead it just holds out a hand, the inhuman one, a weapon held like a peace offering. 

“My name’s Nick.” And this time the smile looks genuine, a dry wit laughing at the absurdity of the situation in a way she’s not certain she understands. 

Lydia eyes it, respecting the gesture behind it’s choice of hands. No lies, no falsities or misleading pleasantries. He holds out his hand and spreads his cards on the table. 

She takes it with just a moment of hesitation. 

“Lydia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read somewhere that's we're scared of clowns because we can tell that the painted smiles are fake so we think they're trying to trick us with false positive intentions. I like the idea that synths set off that uncanny valley fear in people as an extra explanation for why everyone was so intensely scared of them. 
> 
> Thanks for the comments and kudos, everyone. You make my fucking day every time. <3

**Author's Note:**

> I hope Lydia isn't taken, I just sort of picked it on a whim. Anyways love you, sweet dreams


End file.
